{"id":64529,"date":"2021-11-15T13:41:19","date_gmt":"2021-11-15T20:41:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/?p=64529"},"modified":"2021-11-16T13:19:54","modified_gmt":"2021-11-16T20:19:54","slug":"lumberjacks-vote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/lumberjacks-vote\/","title":{"rendered":"Lumberjacks vote"},"content":{"rendered":"

Democracy requires participation. The NAU Votes Coalition wants to make sure everyone is participating, and a recent national report showed they\u2019re well on their way to that goal.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

According to the 2020 National\u00a0Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement (NSLVE)\u00a0<\/span>Campus Report<\/span><\/a>, NAU had a 16.4 point increase in voting rate, jumping from 45.9 percent in 2016 to 62.3 percent in 2020. Moreover, 82.3 percent of voter-eligible NAU students registered to vote in 2020 compared to 77.3 percent in 2016. That number is above the national average for comparable student voters.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The\u00a0coalition, a\u00a0campuswide\u00a0effort to increase voter registration, education and\u00a0election participation, played a major role in increasing\u00a0youth turnout\u00a0at NAU and throughout\u00a0Arizona.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBetween 2016 and 2020, there was not a significant change in the\u00a0investment from outside groups in voter registration and GOTV efforts at NAU,\u201d said\u00a0<\/span>Kyle\u00a0Nitschke<\/span><\/b>, the\u00a0organizing director for the Arizona Students\u2019 Association\u00a0and\u00a0a member of the NAU\u00a0Votes Coalition.\u00a0\u201cThe difference\u00a0was this coalition and the coordinated action to integrate voting into student life.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The NAU Votes Coalition is spearheaded by faculty and students from the NAU\u00a0community<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

engagement\u00a0minor and includes participants from departments and organizations\u00a0throughout\u00a0campus, the community and the state. The group is part of the\u00a0<\/span>All\u00a0In\u00a0Democracy Challenge<\/span><\/a>, a\u00a0national campus effort to increase young people\u2019s democratic participation. By recognizing\u00a0colleges and universities for their commitment to increasing student voting rates, the\u00a0challenge\u00a0encourages higher education institutions to help students form the habits of active and informed\u00a0citizenship, make democratic participation a core value on their campus and cultivate\u00a0generations of engaged citizens who are essential to a healthy\u00a0democracy.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Members of the NAU Votes Coalition coordinated their voter registration and engagement efforts\u00a0to reach students in a\u00a0variety\u00a0of ways. They made hundreds of class presentations to encourage\u00a0students to vote and help them through the process. They worked with NAU staff to add a\u00a0prominent voter registration link on the\u00a0NAU<\/span>go<\/span><\/i>\u00a0app and integrated voter registration into\u00a0students\u2019\u00a0NAU accounts. They developed the\u00a0<\/span>NAU Votes<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span>website as a hub for voting information\u00a0and created an engaging video for faculty to show in their classes.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The coalition\u00a0also worked with the\u00a0ASNAU president\u00a0to send out\u00a0a\u00a0message\u00a0to students\u00a0emphasizing the importance of voter registration. Finally, they provided ongoing voter education,\u00a0with student-focused events including a panel discussion of voter suppression with county\u00a0election officials and student activists, a campus debate among the candidates for state House\u00a0and Senate and a Know Your Vote night giving students information about the propositions and\u00a0offices on their ballot.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c<\/span>There is not a\u00a0more direct way to\u00a0initiate change\u00a0than through exercising our right and\u00a0responsibility to vote,\u201d said\u00a0<\/span>Lori\u00a0Poloni-Staudinger<\/span><\/b>, the i<\/span>nterim\u00a0dean of\u00a0the College of\u00a0Social and Behavioral Sciences. \u201c<\/span>I am beyond\u00a0pleased to see the efforts of the NAU Votes coalition pay off,\u00a0because\u00a0in the College of Social and\u00a0Behavioral Sciences\u00a0we\u00a0pride\u00a0ourselves\u00a0on engagement and making a difference in our\u00a0communities.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The NAU Votes Coalition is building on the 2020 momentum by creating a culture of civic\u00a0engagement at NAU through a collaborative campus effort. The group will focus on\u00a0institutionalizing and integrating\u00a0voter registration into student life,\u00a0providing election information\u00a0for students through various platforms and increasing voter participation.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Photo credit: Photo by\u00a0Dan Dennis\u00a0on\u00a0Unsplash<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Democracy requires participation. The NAU Votes Coalition wants to make sure everyone is participating, and a recent national report showed they\u2019re well on their way to that goal.\u00a0 According to the 2020 National\u00a0Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement (NSLVE)\u00a0Campus Report, NAU had a 16.4 point increase in voting rate, jumping from 45.9 percent in 2016…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":64531,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-community"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64529\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}